Bengal and Assam set for Second Phase polling

Bengal and Assam set for Second Phase polling

Voting for the second phase of the Assembly elections in West Bengal and Assam will take place on Thursday. A total of 69 seats spread across both states will be up for grabs.

All eyes are on the high-profile constituency of Nandigram, where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee faces off against her protégé-turned-adversary Suvendu Adhikari.

The 10,620 booths where voting will take place in this phase have been declared sensitive by the Electoral Commission, which has deployed around 651 companies from the central forces to provide security, authorities said.

In addition, state police will also be deployed to strategic locations during the voting that will begin at 7 a.m., they said.

A total of 199 companies from the Central Armed Police will be deployed in Purba Medinipur, 210 companies in Paschim Medinipur, 170 in South 24 Parganas, and 72 in Bankura, the sources said.

TMC and BJP are competing for all 30 seats, while CPI (M) is in the fray at 15 and its Sanjukta Morcha alliance partners Congress and ISF are competing for 13 and two seats respectively.

The vote will take place amid strict COVID-19 guidelines on nine seats in Paschim Medinipur, eight in Bankura, four seats in South 24 Parganas and nine in Purba Medinipur, the hometown of the renegade TMC and leader of the BJP. , Suvendu Adhikari. Nandigram falls in the Purba Medinipur district.

The agrarian constituency that shook the foundations of the powerful left-wing regime over the anti-land acquisition movement in 2007 has now become a battlefield of titans with Banerjee suddenly deciding to switch from his seat in Bhowanipur to the constituency in the hands of Adhikari, his former lieutenant. who has changed his allegiance to the BJP?

For Adhikari, it is a battle for political survival, as a defeat would be a devastating blow and could also put a question mark on his political chart in his new party, the BJP. Similarly, a victory would not only establish him as one of Bengal’s tallest leaders but would also put him a few miles ahead of others in the race for Prime Minister should the BJP be elected to power.

For Banerjee, who is running for the third consecutive term as prime minister, a victory is essential to lead the government and keep his party, which is facing the exodus, together.

For the candidate of the Congress-Left-ISF alliance Minakshi Mukherjee of the CPI-M, the challenge is to recover lost ground for her party.

While Banerjee had been camping in Nandigram for the past four days, BJP deployed their ‘big guns’ including Interior Minister Amit Shah, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and superstar Mithun Chakraborty to defend Adhikari territory, which he had won in 2016 and took in Didi ‘(as Mamata is popularly called).

Apart from identity politics and Bengali sub-nationalism, the demand for employment, the inclusion of backward Hindu communities in the OBC category and the establishment of an agriculture-based industry have emerged as the main voting issues in the second phase of the elections. surveys.

l Of the 30 seats to be voted on Thursday, 23 were won by TMC in the 2016 assembly elections, five by the Left Front and Congress and one by the BJP.

The political equation in the state had changed in 2019 when the BJP made massive inroads into the tribal-dominated Janga Mahal region and the Medinipur belt by sweeping the five seats of Lok Sabha. The TMC, however, has been able to maintain its dominance in the South 24 Parganas district, where there is a sizeable minority population.

A prominent seat that will go to the polls in the second phase is Sabang, where TMC has sent its Rajya Sabha MP Manas Bhunia. He takes on TMC renegade and BJP leader Amulya Maity.

Bhunia, a former president of the state Congress, served from 1982 to 016 as a congressional candidate before switching to TMC in September 2016.

TMC has featured actor Sayantika Banerjee, a popular face on the Bengali silver screen, from the Bankura seat against BJP’s Niladri Sekhar Dana. The Sanjukta Morcha has sent Congress candidate Radharani Banerjee.

In Debra’s seat, two former IPS officers will cross swords. One is the BJP candidate, Bharati Ghosh, who is competing against TMC’s Humayun Kabir. Both had resigned from their senior police positions to join active politics.

Banerjee, who has been in a wheelchair since his accident earlier this month, crisscrossed most of the constituencies that went to the polls in the second phase. TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee toured the rest stating that TMC will not allow Bengal to be ruled from Delhi or Gujarat in an apparent reference to the battery of central BJP leaders and ministers camping in the state.

Assam

In Assam, the ruling BJP is running for 34 seats, while its allies, the AGP and UPPL, are running for six and three seats, respectively. The saffron party will have a friendly contest with AGP and UPPL in two seats each.

Congress is disputed in 27, its partners AIUDF in eight, and BPF in four. The newly formed Assam Jatiya Parishad is competing for 17 seats.